Restaurants, gyms and cinemas, for example, will have to reduce the capacity of clients, guarantee physical distancing and facilitate good ventilation and easy access to hygiene items, among other measures. Likewise, offices and companies must modify their relationship with workers by facilitating teleworking and digital meetings, perhaps dividing the working day between face-to-face and remote or taking shifts at different times.
Our social dynamics will also be modified. The use of the mask will surely remain among some of us. We obsessives will continue to wipe the soles of our shoes and jump every time someone sneezes behind our backs. We will probably be more stingy with hugs and may prioritize family and close friends when giving affection and time.
Before the pandemic, the chapín used to be very friendly when interacting with strangers. There was never a lack of attentive formulas such as good morning, have a good night or have a good time at lunch. However, with the coronavirus, even these services have entered into a crisis. These days very few neighbors say hello in the elevator and almost no pedestrian gives you a smile on the street. We have become sullen and introverted. We have become legions of indifferent mimes, with lost eyes, almost expressionless. Little by little we have lost the joy, the affable dialogue with the stranger, the easy smile. Even bodily gestures are hardening on us.
We do work, leisure and social relationships (and even sexual ones) through the screen. Could it be that, from spending so much time in the digital world, we now feel strange dealing face to face with our peers?
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It scares me to think that we will return to a new normality more distanced, more jealous of our space – one meter fifty if you have the kindness. Cleaner (almost neat), without the delicious nonchalance of sucking on a mango in the street. More cautious in our hugs and no kisses with strangers. Adventure nights will be reduced to digital lust.
It terrifies me to think that we will be left without the sweetness of a greeting blown from the lips, that we will never hear someone who has a happy day said forcefully and head-on, almost spit on, to feel the droplets of saliva that stain one's expensive. I don't want to be left without the happy smile that crosses between two strangers or without the courtesy of stretching out an arm to help a fallen person.
It shakes me to know that we are losing joy. Many people will not survive this time because we did not do what we should, because our authorities were incapable, because our health system was not working, or because we were selfish and irresponsible.
We are changing. After this pandemic we will no longer be the same. But we still have time to defend the joy of children playing at recess, of young people dreaming of a better future and of grandparents hugging their grandchildren on Sunday afternoon. We are in time to defend the joy of the petty who only think of themselves. Defend it from the incompetent and corrupt who rob us of hope.
To defend joy as a trench, as a principle, as a flag, as a destiny, as a certainty, as a right, Benedetti would say.
